Author Aaron Poochigian. Musings on Washington Square Park

27th October 2017

#TalkingLocationWith... Aaron Poochigian, author of Mr. Either/Or. Musings on Washington Square Park, New York.

My verse-novel Mr. Either/Or opens in New York City’s Washington Square. Like any good urban retreat, the real, non-fictional park instantly sets me at ease. All sorts of buskers—one-man-bands, banjo-girls, ukulele-dudes—provide free entertainment and, ubiquitous in New York City parks, the dollar-a-game speed-chess players are always earning their livelihood. Surrounded now by buildings owned by NYU, the park serves as a de facto quad where students enjoy what seems an idyllic student-life—reading, working on projects together, chatting amongst themselves. Collegial paradise.

Washington Square Photo © nyycgovparks.org

Wikipedia

On the north side of the park there is, of course, the Washington Square Arch, monumental terminus of Fifth Avenue. Modelled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (which was in turn modelled on the Arch of Titus in Rome), it symbolizes, to me, what my verse-novel “Mr. Either/Or” is about—bringing the tradition of Classical Epic down through the ages to the New World and twenty-first century America. The Arch also resonates for me because it is a holy site for Bohemian artists. On January 24th, 1917 the Dadaist writer Marcel Duchamp, along with a gang of other artists, accessed the top of the Arch through an internal staircase (to which the door is now kept locked). With lantern light, balloons and song, they proclaimed themselves an independent nation, “The New Republic of Bohemia.” On the same date one hundred years later, just four days after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, devotees gathered to commemorate Duchamp’s Declaration of Independence. I like to consider myself a citizen of this borderless polity of artists.

© the author

On the north side I also admire, from a safe distance, the legendary “Hangman’s Elm.” Over three hundred years old, it allegedly served as a many-armed gallows for traitors during the American Revolution. (Yankee Doodle Dandy.) Oh, but there are lots of trees, roughly three hundred of them: Sugar Maples and Sycamores, Birches and Basswoods—classic trees, Americana. Equally prominent, however, are the immigrants, mostly from Japan: Ginkgos and Katsuras, Zelkovas and Pagodas.

South of the Arch and roughly in the middle of the park I always pause before the large fountain and round pool which tempt scofflaws both tourist and native to strip down and bathe until the cops come and bust them. I also can only admire, nearby and twenty feet tall, the Great Garibaldi. No, not a giant magician, but a statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian nationalist and one of the greatest generals of the 19th century. A brisk walk then brings me to the buildings at 51-55 Washington Square South, where the celebrated Judson Hotel once provided extended-stay rooms for artists. Legend has it that the poet E. A. Robinson lodged in the Hotel’s bell-tower overlooking the park. Henry James, author of the novella “Washington Square,” also stayed there.

Most powerful, however, is my awareness that the park now lies on what was a potter’s field. Estimates claim that as many as 20,000 impoverished bodies were interred here. The land was then turned, in the early 19th century, into a military parade ground, and history records soldiers’ tales of cannon wheels rolling over the skulls of the shallowly buried. The land became a park in 1850 and was redesigned under the aegis of the New York City Department of Parks in 1871.

I hope that I have given some rough sense of how this little patch of ground went from graveyard of Greenwich, to base of operations for three generations of rebellious artists (Avant-Garde, Beatnik and Hippie), to the tourist attraction and college gathering place that it is today. I hope as well that my novel evokes much of all that the park means to me when it opens with “you,” the reader, the hero, shoeless, sockless, lying on the grass:

Washington Square, playground of NYU,
and you are in the grass, your shoes and socks
like sloughed snakeskin around you. Speed-chess players
at concrete tables cuss and slap their clocks
as cops with nothing nine-one-one to do
roust dormant derelicts from greenhouse layers
of coats and trash. Nearby, a Ginkgo tree,
and under it a blonde in horn-rimmed glasses
eating up The Stranger by Camus.

. . . . .

Bare-legged girls are laughing in the sun
as bearded buskers noodle on a nicked-up
cello, bouzouki, and accordion
beneath the arch that Frenchifies the quad.
Laissez les bons temps rule. You should have picked up
trombone, you should have mastered being chill. . .

Thanks so much to Aaron for the wonderful and personal insights into this slice of Manhattan. You can connect with him via his website and Twitter.

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